Simple bodily worn medical bracelets and medallions have been used for may years by individuals with serious medical conditions to alert emergency medical personnel in the event the wearer is stricken and unconscious that the wearer has a serious pre-existing medical condition which requires special medical treatment. Although these simple bracelets and pendants have been useful they lack the space and storage capacity necessary hold critical lifesaving medical information and any electronics to interface with modern patient monitors and or electronics. Such critical lifesaving information includes: blood type, a description of pre-existing medical conditions, photo ID or other positive identification, ECG scan, Cardiac, Ultrasound scan, present drug usage and interaction cautions, severe drug and other allergic reactions. The invention disclosed herein, and complimentary inventions disclosed by the inventor, teach the design of bodily worn or carried devices which can store large amounts or digital medical records and have those records retrieved in a rapid wireless or contact manner in the event of a medical emergency. The Bodily Worn Device (BWD) can also be embodied into a digital storage card and/or medical computer disk, which is disclosed in another invention by this inventor. Also, other key medical and personal information which can be stored into the bodily worn digital devices include Organ Donor Instructions and Living will instructions which have become very common place and vital to the medical community as well as the individual. Integral to the use of the Bodily worn digital storage devices (BWD) are the inventions disclosed herein which are medical monitors, personal computers, portable display devices and interface electronics used to organize medical records, encrypt the records for security, transmit the records through interface electronics and digitally write the data on computer chips and other suitable storage media located within and part of the BWD. There are a plurality of possible hardware, communications and software configurations for the invention herein. Several of a plurality of embodiments of the invention are disclosed herein, which will most likely be the most convenient and usable commercial versions of the invention.
By disclosing these possible embodiments the inventor is by no means limiting the scope of the invention to said embodiments and the inventor claims the broadest interpretation of said plurality of embodiments. These include: 1. a portable field unit which will include a display screen, microcomputer, interface wand, software, and a means of transmitting data back to a base unit in an emergency 2. an interface module which, in lieu of an entire new patient monitor, can be added to a IU slot in an existing patient monitor and add the capability of accepting data from the Interface Wand and BWD without adding a lot of additional cost to the health care system, 3. a more substantial Base Unit which would be most likely a PC based system and include software for organizing and editing medical data and records, encrypting those records for confidentiality and security, and sending those records directly through the Interface Wand to be digitally written and stored within the BWD in digital storage media such as a computer chip. Although there are many existing and off the shelf software packages currently available there is none which would allow for a concise, highly organized and standard format for displaying of emergency medical records. Since time is of the essence and correct treatment and medical intervention is often a life or death situation it is essential to have the stored medical records in a highly organized, concise standard format so an EMT can go right to the critical information, assess the best medical treatment options and act accordingly. This highlights the need for unique software to organize the emergency medical records and information into concise and edited format for easy use and such software is disclosed herein as part of this invention.
There has been prior art in the medical industry which, although peripherally related to medical records and computer systems, does not teach the art or devices described herein. Doue in U.S. Pat. No. 5,361,202 teaches a computer system and software specifically for the purpose of managing a patients stay in a hospital or clinic. Doue makes no mention of organizing or applying any critical emergency medical information, makes no mention of using or interfacing with Bodily Worn Devices or Medical cards and in general Doue's invention in no way completes with the invention disclosed herein. Since the invention disclosed herein is not used in any way, and makes no claims to manage the time frame for a patients stay in a hospital, these two patents really have nothing more in common than the fact that they use a screen and a microprocessor. Whalen in U.S. Pat. No. 5,327,341 teaches a computer system and software for managing general medical records and files in a hospital and physician office environment. Whalen focuses on the software side of his invention and teaches means of creating headers and organization categories for large amounts of medical information. No where in his invention does Whalen teach organizing Emergency Medical information for emergency medical treatment which is created for the purpose of storage on Bodily Worn and/or Digital Storage cards or disks. Nowhere does Whalen teach any of the Interface Wand, Interface module and data transmission features of the devices disclosed in this invention. The main claims of the Whalen patent deal with managing and updating an individuals medical records in a routine office based setting using key words, hybrid data fields, etc, which this invention is not claiming and for applications this invention has no intention of addressing. Eberhardt in U.S. Pat. No. 5,659,741 teaches a medical history computer system for recording medical histories aimed at organizing very large amounts of medical data for organizations such as the federal government for keeping track of medicare and medicaid and/or for large insurance companies. This differs from the invention disclosed in that the emergency medical data described herein is not stored in a central computer but is organized and stored on Bodily Worn devices. The inventions described herein are patient monitors and interface hardware specifically aimed at retrieving and displaying the stored emergency medical data. Eberhardt fails to teach any of the patient monitors, modules or interface electronic hardware necessary to make the retrieval of emergency medical data a practical device. Although Ebehardt mentions cards or disks to carry medical records he fails to teach any type of practical card or disk and fails to teach how such a card or disk would be interfaced with a practical computer system or its components. An integral part of Ebehardt's inventions, which is not required by the invention disclosed herein, is the ability to sort for medical information and/or data by key word, phrase, etc. This is not necessary for the invention described herein in terms of its software and is outside of the scope of this invention.